At this point, if you bought a chair specifically to put outside to look up at the sky, it wouldn’t be the worst investment. We’ve seen planet parades, a solar eclipse, a triple meteor shower and even the Milky Way. Folks in the northernmost US states, including New York, Montana, Washington state and Minnesota, will have a chance to add another aurora borealis sighting to their social media profiles on Monday and Tuesday night this week.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association tracked an ejection of solar material from the sun on Aug. 11 that should hit Earth on Aug. 12-13. This material causes geomagnetic storms that drive aurora borealis farther south. This has been a fairly common occurrence this year and means that people will be able to see the northern lights farther south than normal.
NOAA says that the aurora borealis will be visible in the red and green zones.
Essentially, the entire northern border of the US will be able to sneak a peek. That means Washington state, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, New York and on up through Maine. There is also a chance that the northernmost portions of the states bordering those will be able to see it as well. NOAA says it’ll continue through Aug. 13, so hopefully you’ll be able to snap a few sweet pictures for Instagram.
Back in May, the aurora borealis lit up the night sky for tens of millions of people across the US, with reports of it reaching as far south as Alabama. While such brilliant instances of aurora borealis that far south are exceedingly rare, they do tend to creep into the northern US fairly consistently.
Aurora borealis was visible Sunday night as well
NOAA’s predictions can vary. Sometimes the aurora borealis ends up not stretching as far south as the models predict, while other times, it goes much farther. This gorgeous video on X from Las Vegas Locally shows just a tiny bit of aurora borealis along with some meteors from the Perseids meteor shower at Joshua Tree National Park in California, which is much farther south than NOAA predicted aurora borealis would go.
The city of Pittsburgh was also able to see it, best shown in this frankly incredible time-lapse video on X where the northern lights bathe the city in green and purple light. Of course, people on the other side of the world have been able to experience both the northern lights and Perseids as well, such as this X user from the Netherlands who was able to get a juicy shot of a meteor and aurora borealis in the same photo.
So, if you’re in the northernmost regions of the US, and NOAA’s graphic doesn’t seem to stretch down far enough to where you are, we recommend taking a look anyway. It could outperform expectations and reach down to where you are. Just remember that being in the big city or the suburbs will likely cause too much light pollution to get a good photo, so you may need to drive out of town for a bit if you want to see it.
